By ROBERT WHITE
Journal staff writer
Faced with a flock of Canada geese fouling up their scenic lake, residents of Lake Barcroft tried a number of schemes to shoo away the pesky birds - border collies, chemical repellents, fake plastic owls and anything else they could think of.
"Seventeen things we tried," recalled Holly Hazard, who lives in the eastern Fairfax County community. "Everything that was possible, we tried."
Lake Barcroft eventually chased away many of its 100 geese. But Hazard and the others were not satisfied.
"We were moving the problem, not solving it," she said. "The geese were just moving to Baileys elementary school or Pinecrest golf course or some other lake."
Now, the group - organized under the banner of GeesePeace, a nonprofit organization they founded last year - works with the Humane Society of the United States and several county agencies to promote what it believes is a permanent fix to Fairfax County's burgeoning Canada geese problem.
The organizations plan to train volunteers to identify goose nests and coat the birds' eggs with oil, preventing the eggs from developing and thereby reducing the overall number of geese.
The project is the first of its kind in the Washington, D.C., area. County officials, Humane Society representatives and GeesePeace members will discuss the effort in detail at 7:30 tomorrow night at Chantilly High School.
"This is a different approach," said Andrea L. Ceisler, an official with the Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District, which is assisting the project. "Harassing the geese [with dogs or repellents] just serves to move your problem to someone else's backyard. This is aimed at reducing the geese population so as not to create a problem for someone else."
Canada geese are increasing in number along much of the East Coast as the birds less and less frequently migrate north to their usual Canadian nesting grounds in the summer. Some figures show Fairfax's goose population growing by 15 percent a year.
The birds, a nuisance to golf course managers and civic associations that manage large bodies of water, can present a serious environmental hazard by threatening water quality, environmental groups say.
Under the federal Migratory Bird Act, Canada geese cannot be hunted out of season and without a federal permit stamp, although airports and water authorities can apply for special permits to shoot the birds.
But Hazard, a self-described animal lover, said she wanted Fairfax County to stem its goose population before hunting became a necessity, as has been the case with the county's exploding deer herd.
"I don't want Fairfax County to be in a position five years from now that we're in with the deer now, where the only solution anyone can think of is, `We gotta kill them. We gotta kill them,'" she said. "We think of it as spaying or neutering. If we can stop a gosling from being born now ... it is a lot easier than rounding up and trapping the birds or setting them up for slaughter later."
Michael R. Frey, a Republican who represents western Fairfax on the Board of Supervisors and an opponent of the county's annual deer hunts, agreed.
"It seems to me to be a more pro-active approach and to have a better chance for success than the deer kills," he said.
Under the GeesePeace plan, volunteers will watch where geese make their nests and when they lay their eggs. Trained professionals from the Humane Society, working under a federal permit, will then "addle" the eggs with oil - often just household vegetable oil - preventing oxygen from getting to the embryos.
Oiling the eggs or replacing the real eggs with fake ones "kind of tricks" mother geese into nesting on eggs that will never hatch, said Ceisler, the soil and water district official.
"You can't just take the eggs away from the nest, because the mother goose will see there is no egg there and lay more," she said.
Hazard said the county will need dozens of volunteers to scour small lakes and industrial parks this spring for goose nests. Employees of the county Park Authority, which is taking part in the effort, will watch for nests on public lakes, she said.